The desire to heal the creature also revealed a side to Nikolai that he wasn’t sure he wished to acknowledge. As well as the fact that this time, the big guy had saved his life without first endangering it.
Dammit.Lucas gritted his teeth. He didn’t want to owe Nikolai anything. He and Aria were out here, in the midst of a swamp, because of this guy.
Lucas gritted his teeth, turned away, and climbed.
* * *
Nikolai followed Lucas up the rock ridge when he sensed the surge.
He froze so suddenly that Lucas turned back to glare.
“What now?” the Morph demanded.
Nikolai ignored him and focused. The same energy that the thin men had opened the doorway—gate—with, coming from the building they’d left behind. Something opened it, and what came through it made every hair on his body stand on end.
There were three, and their life essences glowed blue and green in his mind. Outshining everything around them, they sent invisible tendrils rippling outward, searching like bloodhounds.
Searching for him.
They have come for you.
There was no place to hide. Nikolai stood very still as a tendril touched him, passed by, and then froze. It snapped back to him, and a millisecond later, all the tendrils raced to join it.
They knew where he was. And as the voice had said, they would come for him.
You no longer have anything to fear from them. You have discovered your power, and they cannot stop you.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Lucas’s gaze had, if anything, become more accusatory.
“They’ve found me.” Nikolai replied.
The dark brows rose. “They?”
Nikolai didn’t answer, but rather turned and strode past Lucas and up the rock ridge toward Aria.
The Dragon shifter was also standing and staring off into the forest. Now she met Nikolai’s gaze as he approached.
“Did I feel something...”
“Yes. They know I’m here.”
Her eyes widened. “The Watchers?”
“Three of them. They are coming.”
Lucas came up behind them, wearing his customary frown. He waved back to the forest. “They can’t travel through that at night.”
Nikolai glanced at him. “I could. They will as well.” This was a very different place from the one in which he’d been raised, but the principles were the same. With his ability to sense all living things, he’d have no trouble navigating the forest in the dark.
“Then we have to keep moving,” Aria stated.
It was bravely said, but Nikolai heard the exhaustion in her voice. Both she and the Morph had been through one hell of an ordeal, and they’d marched for hours through the dense forest.
You do not need them. You must leave them and face your destiny.
Leave them? Nikolai shoved the voice away.
Lucas was staring at Aria with both incredulity and dismay. “No way we can move through this place at night.”
